Why You Should Let Kids Eat Dirt

I have always been an advocate of letting kids be kids and allowing them to enjoy the outdoors just like I did growing up. I was raised at a ranch and life was basically 90% outdoors and 10% indoors, at nights. My mother was a clean freak so I have no idea how she managed to stay sane with so many dirty children coming home at night that she had to wash before bed.

I am a true believer that the environment we grow up in has much to do with our health, however not everything is entirely true. I don't necessarily believe you should feed dirt to your kids to be healthy but just let them do what they do naturally. Kids know what to do, they can handle it.

Kids who are exposed to more germs before age one are less likely to have allergies and asthma, a new study finds.

A new study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology shows that being exposed to allergens before a child turns one can benefit them from allergies. Kids who were completely free of allergies were also most likely to grow up in homes with the highest amount of allergens and bacteria in them!

This "hygiene hypothesis," which is the speculation that the reason Americans have so many allergies is because we are, quite simply, too clean. Kids are kept in such sterile homes that they never build immunities to common allergens.

I remember being told to keep my cat outside my house while my first daughter was born to prevent her from getting allergies. Not so. I loved my cat so much that was not going to happen. I had my pregnancy with him around and he was always indoors and outdoors and when she grew up, my cat was always a part of her daily life. She never had allergies to cat hair or any other kind of allergy. Maybe she inherited the immunity from me, in the womb or after she was born being around cats. Whatever it was, none of my three daughters have cat allergens or any other type of allergy.

Whatever it may be, I have learned I always did the right thing by letting my kids be kids. That's easy.